Elemental Shaman (Haste vs Mastery)

Ok, so I have been reforging pushing for more haste with every piece of gear, etc to get the highest haste possible, and I have been sub par for dps for some time now in decent gear. I started to research other shaman who are doing well on fights I suffer on and I see that a lot of them stop with Haste at or below 15%, usually 11.?? haste.. for instance ~ {Durotan /durotan/Xooda/ eu} ~has 11.74% haste and the rest reforged into mastery. What did I miss here? I know that 5%/15%/25% are our haste marks for extra ticks but is it assumed that we go with 15% (or lower so that with buffs we do not go to far over 15%) and then push for as high of mastery as we can get? I am trying to pull dps worthy of a raid spot and suffering a bit, although with my recent dump of haste to 15.15% from 21.48% I feel that my dps has increased. Looking for a hand with some theory craft on what to do with close to 500 ilvl gear.

I think in the end mastery was always going to be a better stat as we got better gear, and it will only get better as the expansion progresses, especially if the EM changes go live in 5.2. What it boils down to, is extra ticks of FS vs more overloads, and it has become apparent that more overloads is a better thing to endeavour for.

I'm rocking around 486 ilevel (unlucky drops), and I did Darkmoon Rabbit for the first time a few days ago. I finished up on 87k DPS while another Shaman in considerably better gear, gemming/reforging for haste opposed to my gemming/reforging for mastery, finished on around 65k DPS. Assuming he/she wasn't AFKing for periods of the fight, judging from that mastery does appear to be a more desirable stat to be aiming for.

Originally Posted by tweekzlol

but then again, The Coon is obviously unbeatable as he will just manipulate you into being his friend

I'm rocking around 486 ilevel (unlucky drops), and I did Darkmoon Rabbit for the first time a few days ago. I finished up on 87k DPS while another Shaman in considerably better gear, gemming/reforging for haste opposed to my gemming/reforging for mastery, finished on around 65k DPS. Assuming he/she wasn't AFKing for periods of the fight, judging from that mastery does appear to be a more desirable stat to be aiming for.

This must the same logic you used in the 5.2 changes thread. Mastery > Haste because you out-damaged someone on Darkmoon Rabbit and Elemental is fine because you can out-damage bad players in your own raid. OK.

This must the same logic you used in the 5.2 changes thread. Mastery > Haste because you out-damaged someone on Darkmoon Rabbit and Elemental is fine because you can out-damage bad players in your own raid. OK.

Why wouldn't I use the same logic again? And I was just using that as an example, no need to get your knickers in a twist.

Also, I never said Elemental was fine, I implied that people aren't playing them as they should be. Why is it wrong to try and make people better players? There are no bad players in my raid roster, thank you very much.

Originally Posted by tweekzlol

but then again, The Coon is obviously unbeatable as he will just manipulate you into being his friend

Mastery also doesn't affect fulmination damage, which is a greater % of our overall damage once you get 4p.

It may not directly do anything to fulmination damage, but when you get an overload proc with lightning bolt or chain lightning it can still trigger more charges of lightning shield which in turn makes you do more earth shocks which in turn increases your overall damage of fulmination.

It may not directly do anything to fulmination damage, but when you get an overload proc with lightning bolt or chain lightning it can still trigger more charges of lightning shield which in turn makes you do more earth shocks which in turn increases your overall damage of fulmination.

Yes, mastery procs will yield more rolling thunder procs and thus more fulminations, just as haste will yield more casts and thus more fulminations. But while haste acts to lower the GCD, aka the "cast time" of a fulmination proc, mastery does nothing to benefit using a fulmination.

Haste is better for Primal Elementalist. Mastery is better for Elemental Blast. Because EB is slightly favored over PE (the difference was around 3k for me the last time I simmed it), mastery is favored by more of the higher end shaman.

I myself use PE (and thus: haste) exclusively, and I have no trouble ranking and keeping up with the other DPS in my raid (12/16H, currently).

Incidentally, Endus, this might be a good subject to add a section on in the Stats portion of the ele sticky. You mention briefly that PE slightly reduces the value of mastery, but that's a fairly understated way of looking at it. Certainly it should be mentioned that when using EB (the recommended spec) after a certain gear level (if I had to guess, somewhere around 480ilvl) mastery is almost always superior to haste.

Why wouldn't I use the same logic again? And I was just using that as an example, no need to get your knickers in a twist.

Also, I never said Elemental was fine, I implied that people aren't playing them as they should be. Why is it wrong to try and make people better players? There are no bad players in my raid roster, thank you very much.

Because your personal anecdotes are meaningless when evidence from Raidbots contradicts it. If you are consistently out-damaging the best classes (in comparable gear) then, yes, the people you raid with are bad, thank you very much.

Because your personal anecdotes are meaningless when evidence from Raidbots contradicts it. If you are consistently out-damaging the best classes (in comparable gear) then, yes, the people you raid with are bad, thank you very much.

Are you finished?

This is a discussion forum, things are discussed, opinions are presented. Just because a website says this, that or the other is happening doesn't mean everything's wrong with the class and that you should jump on the bandwagon and say Elementals are terrible when they're not.

Not sure why this unfounded attack is happening, maybe you should log off for a while.

Also, @thegempolice

Originally Posted by Eruionmel

I myself use PE (and thus: haste) exclusively, and I have no trouble ranking and keeping up with the other DPS in my raid (12/16H, currently).

I guess everyone in this guys raid are terrible players also?

Last edited by Pum; 2013-01-09 at 11:35 PM.

Originally Posted by tweekzlol

but then again, The Coon is obviously unbeatable as he will just manipulate you into being his friend

This is a discussion forum, things are discussed, opinions are presented. Just because a website says this, that or the other is happening doesn't mean everything's wrong with the class and that you should jump on the bandwagon and say Elementals are terrible when they're not.

Not sure why this unfounded attack is happening, maybe you should log off for a while.

Also, @thegempolice

I guess everyone in this guys raid are terrible players also?

Just because I can keep up with them doesn't mean I don't think elemental has issues. It certainly does. And as for your first points... So we should just ignore all concrete evidence and side with your personal anecdotes instead? I think not.

Just because I can keep up with them doesn't mean I don't think elemental has issues. It certainly does. And as for your first points... So we should just ignore all concrete evidence and side with your personal anecdotes instead? I think not.

I wasn't bad-mouthing you, just using your quote in context. I have never said Elementals had issues, ever, and I'd like to stop being quoted on that.

I also didn't say ignore concrete evidence, if I implied that then apologies. What I'm saying is that everything isn't so black and white, when obviously you and I do not have issues with our DPS, Raidbots can't be the be-all or end-all.

Originally Posted by tweekzlol

but then again, The Coon is obviously unbeatable as he will just manipulate you into being his friend

I wasn't bad-mouthing you, just using your quote in context. I have never said Elementals had issues, ever, and I'd like to stop being quoted on that.

I also didn't say ignore concrete evidence, if I implied that then apologies. What I'm saying is that everything isn't so black and white, when obviously you and I do not have issues with our DPS, Raidbots can't be the be-all or end-all.

You did say that they don't have issues, which is what I was contesting. Raidbots is concrete evidence. Elemental is performing at a lower level that the vast majority of specs.

You do have to take into account the fact that the differences that create "lower level" are just a few thousand, however. Which means that very skilled elementals can easily be in the middle of the pack or even beating players who are just slightly less skilled (or less motivated). I'm very often horribly outstripped on fights where I make a couple of mistakes or where I'm not playing at my best, as the rest of my raid team is also very good. I'm only able to stay even because I push myself extremely hard and know my spec inside and out. I can guarantee you that if I played something like arcane mage or aff lock, I would be far out-dpsing my elemental shaman's numbers.

Yes, mastery procs will yield more rolling thunder procs and thus more fulminations, just as haste will yield more casts and thus more fulminations. But while haste acts to lower the GCD, aka the "cast time" of a fulmination proc, mastery does nothing to benefit using a fulmination.

How on earth is 6-8% fulm/ES dmg considered "greater % of our overall damage"?

I think you took that out of context... my op says "greater % of our overall damage with 4p"... implying that 4p increases damage done by fulmination, which mastery does not affect.

Either way, picking a stat based off of 6-8% of your dmg is a stupid idea. From the way my sims have been leading me, mastery is better on fights with little or no movement, but heavy movement encounters haste is better. So as long as you aren't overly moving, you might as well just go mastery build.

Originally Posted by Eruionmel

You did say that they don't have issues, which is what I was contesting. Raidbots is concrete evidence. Elemental is performing at a lower level that the vast majority of specs.

You do have to take into account the fact that the differences that create "lower level" are just a few thousand, however. Which means that very skilled elementals can easily be in the middle of the pack or even beating players who are just slightly less skilled (or less motivated). I'm very often horribly outstripped on fights where I make a couple of mistakes or where I'm not playing at my best, as the rest of my raid team is also very good. I'm only able to stay even because I push myself extremely hard and know my spec inside and out. I can guarantee you that if I played something like arcane mage or aff lock, I would be far out-dpsing my elemental shaman's numbers.

From what I can tell, it's because our dps is balanced around Ascendance. I burst ridiculously high on pull then every other dps just catches up overtime especially if I'm trying to play "smart" and saving my burst CD for phases where bosses need to die fast or to push a phase (mainly an issue on progression but still). Just go sim and look at the dps graph where it shows the average, outside of the Ascendace/FET our dps is 5-10k below the "average". It would be so easy to fix by just nerfing LvB and buffing Earth Shock/Lightning Shield/Lightning Bolt.

Either way, picking a stat based off of 6-8% of your dmg is a stupid idea. From the way my sims have been leading me, mastery is better on fights with little or no movement, but heavy movement encounters haste is better. So as long as you aren't overly moving, you might as well just go mastery build.

Yes, picking a stat off of 6-8% of our damage would be a silly idea, except that haste and mastery are pretty neck and neck in my current sims. Before getting the 4p I generally was balancing them out, but with the additional weight (however small you want to say that weight is) haste gets from additional 4p fulmination damage, haste has been winning out for me.

EDIT: Also something that I forgot to mention is personal preference. For the most part, both will have a similar direct impact on your dps. But something that I noticed from messing around with the stats myself is that with high mastery stacking you are going to have bigger RNG dps swings. As has been already stated in this thread, Ele is currently a specc that bursts high but doesn't sustain well.. meaning that short periods with our cooldowns up are where most of our dps comes from. While over the course of a fight your mastery proccs will even out, you can sometimes spend an ascendence period hardly getting any at all. Yes this is possible even prioritizing haste, but the swings won't be as large.

Seriously, use simulationcraft, it's there for a reason.
It's the only way for you too see which stat is currently better, if you start stacking one stat, the other stat will gain more value, thus it's pretty reccomended to try to keep abit of balance in your gear.

Originally Posted by Pum

I guess everyone in this guys raid are terrible players also?

I am sorry but it's a different between performing good and performing maximum potential.
If he keeps out with the others in his guild and there are mages/warlocks/most of the other classes with the same gear as him, they aren't playing thier class as good as they should. The dps difference is fairly huge at this level of gear.
I'm 10/16 HC and can get good ranks on many fights that we play while the other dpsers in the raid performed better or at the same level as me, and doesn't even get ranked. It's true that this aren't a good measure either, as less people raid elemental shammys then other specs i believe, but still some kind of truth in the argument.

I think our dps is around 5% RNG, meaning if we're getting lucky on mastery procs, we can boost our dps by 5% on a fight, while if we get unlucky we can loose around 5%, this is if executing our mechanics perfect.
You can't compare things based on your raidgroup and your experience, you can't even take 10 people that backs you up and say that you're right. World of warcraft is a huge game with huge amount of data collected, amazing simulationcraft situations and very complex math. You should really take a look at that before you claim random things, which got no facts to back it up at all. It just doesn't work that way. If blizzard would handle balance like that, the game would be ruined.